by Pamela Morsi
Piney sighed with relief.
“But it’s time you got your own crap together. I can’t believe that I’m the one who has to blow the whistle on this move,” Tree said. “Have you not been listening to all these heart-to-heart talks you’ve been giving me? The Baxley men are not players, Dad. We fall in love. We get married. Isn’t that what you’ve been telling me? If we try to fool around, play the field, we’re the ones that end up getting hurt.”
It was uncomfortable for Piney to hear his own words quoted back to him.
His son wasn’t finished. “You’re going to fall hard for her, Dad, if you haven’t already. And if you let her go, you’re going to be even lonelier than you’ve been.”
34
Camryn went to church with her mother. She thought that was what she wanted to do. But once she got there and saw that Tree hadn’t come, she excused herself to go to the ladies’ room and surreptitiously slipped out the door.
Once outside and free, she realized she had no place to go. They’d driven here in the Jeep and the keys to the vehicle were in her mom’s purse. The tremendously gorgeous four-inch heels she was wearing looked great, but would never do for a cross-country hike. The only place she could realistically walk to was Tree’s house. And that was perhaps the only home in miles where she was not welcome.
She dawdled in the parking lot for a few minutes, considering an attempt to sneak back into the church. Finally she began ambling down the road toward the Marrying Stone. When she was a little girl her mother used to tell her stories about the place. That the Native Americans had thought it to be magical. And that the old-timers had believed that God could see you clearly from atop its rise. They used to hold weddings on the rock. And a couple married there were truly bound until death do part. Her grandparents had “jumped the Marrying Stone” as they said. Her parents had run off to County Courthouse in Melbourne. No time for a real wedding. Her mom had been knocked up. She liked to say knocked up, even to herself. Inexplicably, it made her feel superior to her stupid parents who brought her into the world because they were too dumb to know how to avoid it. The fact that she had been planning something similar was, to Camryn’s mind, entirely different. She had a plan. Her mom had made a stupid mistake.
She reached the rocky hillock and tentatively picked her way up the climb. At the top she seated herself. Typically she liked to sit cross-legged, Native style, sort of honoring ancient ancestors. But the narrow skirt she wore necessitated a more ladylike posture as she gazed off into the distance. The view, as always, was hypnotically appealing. There were overlooks and ledges all over these mountains, with vistas that could take a person’s breath away. But this strange rock bulging out above the trees was different somehow. It wasn’t hard to imagine how primitive people might have thought it supernatural.
A little magic might have helped her parents, she thought idly, then discarded the idea. Her parents were a terrible mismatch. Her mom, for all that she was a pain in the butt, was quick and clever and shrewd. Her dad, on the other hand, was a happy, beer-swilling yahoo kind of guy and dumb as a box of rocks. How her mother could have ever imagined she’d be happy with him was a total mystery. Maybe there were no choices, she thought. That was the tough thing about living in a tiny community. When it came to dating, there were limited options. There were probably fourteen or fifteen guys in her mom’s graduating class. Half of them would have been relatives. Out of the other seven, she was expected to find her Prince Charming, or at least Mr. Right.
“Good grief,” she said aloud. “It’s a wonder my father wasn’t a serial killer or something.”
Getting away did mean having more choices. And she was determined to get away. Tree was…Tree was wonderful. But if she couldn’t have him, she wasn’t about to be stuck here taking the third- or fourth-best guy, whatever was leftover after her friends had staked their claims. She had to get away. But it wasn’t enough to get away from here. If she wasn’t going toward something, then the first howling wind in the real world would send her scurrying home.
Taking a deep breath and gazing southward into the morning sky, she tried to do what Jesse had urged her. She tried to think about what she wanted. If she could do any kind of work that she wanted to do, what would it be?
Scrounging through her imagination she tried to picture herself in different jobs. Firefighter. Ballerina. Mud wrestler. Astronaut. She visualized herself in image after image and nothing felt quite right. She couldn’t see herself at an office desk or a nurses’ station. But she also felt out of her depth on a construction crew or at a loading dock. Could she drive a truck? Would she want to?
Choice was great, but it could be overwhelming. And she’d hardly scratched the surface of things that she could do. It wasn’t that she hated working in her mother’s store. It was really okay. She didn’t mind helping people and she felt competent and confident when she was able to do so. But she didn’t want to be stuck there. To never get a chance to see if maybe she’d like something else better.
She began hearing the footfalls on the road long before anyone came into view. There were a fair number of joggers around on the roads. It could be any one of them. But Camryn felt certain that at this time, in this place, she knew exactly who it was.
Her stomach tightened. Her first thought was to run. She might be able to hide herself in the brush behind her. But that would be noisy and sure to draw more attention to her. Camryn held herself perfectly still, like a wild animal counting on its camouflage. A half minute later, he was visible. Dressed in sweats and covered with perspiration. He was obviously on the return of what had been a very long run. His pace was measured, deliberate. His eyes were straight ahead and he had his earbuds on. There was a very good chance he would run right past her without ever knowing she was there. That would be preferable to the other possibility. That he would look at her with such disappointment, look at her as if he hardly knew her.
At that moment, he turned his head in her direction, his eyes widened and he half stumbled. He caught himself easily and then began walking in a wide circle. He stopped and bent forward, putting his hands on his knees and he took in great gasps of breath. Then he walked a couple more circles and started stretching his calves and hamstrings.
His long, lean body was beautiful and as he continued to work his muscles, she wondered how much of his movement was cool-down and how much was posing. She already thought he was the hottest guy on the planet. Did he have to make a point about reminding her how much she was missing?
Finally he stopped, but instead of walking on home, he came straight toward her. In three long-limbed steps he was at the top and dropped down to sit beside her.
Camryn immediately felt awkward. On other days in the past five years she would have thrown her arms around his neck and planted a facer. But they were not like that now. They were broken up. Not even friends. Just exes. Who knew what to do? What to say?
“Skipped out of church, I guess,” he began.
“Uh, yeah,” she answered, feeling like a total loser. “I guess I needed some air.”
Tree nodded. “Yeah. I went for a run.”
Well, that’s obvious. She managed not to make the snappy comeback.
“How far did you go?” she asked instead.
“Down to Mendip Cave.”
“Oh, my God, that’s like ten miles.”
He shrugged. “I had stuff on my mind.”
Camryn let that statement lie there for a moment, wondering if she were some of the stuff.
“Did you get it cleared out?” she asked finally.
He turned to grin at her. “Oh, you know how it is, Cammy. Nothing ever really gets cleared, it just gets rearranged enough that you can live with it.”
Tree was rearranging his mind so that he could get used to not being with her.
Camryn examined that thought as it came to her and realized she was back on the all-about-me highway. She’d promised that she was going to be less self-centered. Now, her first
chance to sit with Tree, she was falling back on the old pattern. Deliberately, she rearranged the stuff in her own head.
“I went to see Aunt Will,” she told him. “Last Monday, when I skipped, I went up to see her.”
“Good.”
“Do you think she really will die? I mean soon, not after we’re…we’re gone.”
“My dad thinks she’s going to die soon,” he answered.
“I feel so bad and so sad about it,” Camryn said. “It’s like she’s always been there and I could always depend on that.”
Tree was gazing out into the distance as he nodded.
“I talked to her about it a little,” she said.
“Oh, yeah?” He turned his head to look at her.
Camryn nodded. “She said it was natural and the next thing. She wasn’t sad about it. She was ready to go.”
“Wow,” Tree said. “I guess old people must feel that way. But I can’t imagine it. I want so much. I want to go everywhere, see everything, do everything. If somebody told me that wasn’t going to happen, I’d be mad as hell.”
“Welcome to my world,” she said and then immediately regretted it. She was right back into “the universe revolves around Camryn.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing, it’s stupid.”
“I don’t care, I want to hear it.”
“Oh, no, you don’t,” she assured him. “It’s just more of me getting a big whine on. ‘Poor Camryn. Her life is so hard.’”
Tree chuckled at her woe-is-me dramatics. “Come on, give me the CliffsNotes version. You might as well come out with it, so I won’t keep nagging.”
“It’s a stupid, jealous, weirdness,” she said.
“I like all those things about you,” he insisted.
She laughed at that. She decided to spit it out quickly.
“Well, you know when you were wondering what’s going on with me?”
“Yeah.”
“This is what’s going on. You know what you’re going to do next year and I don’t. So it makes me crazy, there I said it.”
His brow furrowed. “I don’t know what I’m going to do next year,” he said. “I’ll be in college somewhere, studying something and maybe playing basketball, maybe slinging hash in the dorm cafeteria. Not a lot of certainties in that plan.”
“But you know you’re going to college and that gives you more time,” she said. “If you go to college, then you get a year or two, maybe four more years to figure out what you want to do. I’ve got to figure it out now, this year. I’m not getting any breathing space. And I don’t know what I want to do or how I’d even manage to do it if I did.”
Tree’s expression was so obvious, she could almost see the cartoon lightbulb beside his head.
“Oh, wow, I hadn’t thought of that,” he admitted. “Good God, Cammy, that’s got to be terrifying. Having to decide today what you want to do with the whole rest of your life. That is really scary stuff to be going through. It’s the kind of thing you ought to be able to share with your best friend, but this is the first I’ve heard about it.”
“Are we still best friends?” she asked.
“Of course we are,” he answered. “Although I’ve been pretty lame at it. I’ve been accusing you of thinking of nobody but yourself. While I’ve been totally focused on what’s going on with me.”
“But you should be,” Camryn said. “The team is depending on you, just like you say. And where you go to college, that’s big important stuff.”
“But your life is important, too,” he said. “Your life is important to me.”
Camryn thought that was about the sweetest thing that anybody had ever said.
“Thanks,” she answered. “I’m trying to get a handle on my craziness. But sometimes I feel so desperate to get my future settled, that I’d almost settle for anything.”
He grinned at her. “Maybe you should do like me and answer every question in your head with ‘I’ll figure that out after basketball season.’”
“Does that work?”
“Not all that well.”
“Besides, Coach kicked me off the team,” Camryn pointed out. “The season is over for me.”
Tree nodded. “Point taken.”
They sat there together, side by side, watching the sky. The mass of high clouds that had made a thick ceiling over the mountain was beginning to break through in places.
Camryn was thoughtful as she spoke again. “You know, a while back DuJess said something to me. Not about my future so much as things in general. She said that you can figure out anything if you break it down into small enough pieces.”
“Yeah.”
“So maybe I could figure out something that wouldn’t be the end, but more the middle. Like you going off to college.”
“You could go to college,” Tree said. “You’re sure smart enough.”
Camryn rubbed her fingers together. “I’m not smart enough that I don’t need cash. Even with a grant or a scholarship for tuition, there’re books and room and board and living expenses. I’ve already tried to figure it a million ways. My mom is barely keeping a roof over our head. No way that she could help me.”
Tree sighed heavily. “You’re right.”
The two continued to sit as a hundred ideas entered Camryn’s head, only to be discarded.
Suddenly Tree cleared his throat. “I was thinking, Cammy, that if I get a scholarship, especially if I get a good one, which I really might, then all the money my dad has been saving for college, well, it will be more than enough to get me by. If you and I got married, you could go with me wherever it is. Maybe you could take classes, but even if you didn’t, it would give you that breathing space that you need to figure out what you want.”
Camryn’s whole body began to tremble. It was everything she’d hoped for, schemed for, fantasized about. He was holding it out to her, all she had to do was take it.
“You want to marry me, Tree?”
He blushed and shrugged and looked uncomfortable. “You’ve been my girl since eighth grade,” he reminded her. “I always thought we’d get married. I just didn’t think we’d get married…yet.”
Camryn’s blood was coursing through her veins as if she were running sprints. Here, right now, with no lies, deceit or underhanded tricks, her guy was offering her dream come true. All she had to do was accept it.
In the back of her head, she heard Aunt Will’s voice. The best plans are those that don’t rely on the cooperation of others.
Camryn sensed a bit of tarnish on that shiny brass ring.
“What is your dad going to say to this idea?” she asked.
Tree shook his head. “For sure, he’s not going to be very happy,” he answered. “He’ll be mad and disappointed. And probably go psycho on us temporarily. But once we turn eighteen, he won’t be able to stop us. And he loves me enough that he’d probably go along with it, even if he didn’t like it.”
No, Doc Piney wouldn’t like it. And he’d never in a million years believe that it was Tree’s idea and not hers. He didn’t like her already. Something like this would surely etch that in stone. And it might even hurt Tree’s relationship with his dad. They had always been so close.
Camryn’s future still looked as cloudy and confusing as it ever had, but suddenly there was one thing, one bright and shiny thing that was more clear to her than anything else she’d ever known.
“Tree,” she said. “I’ve been in love with you since eighth grade. And I would be honored, thrilled, over-the-moon to marry you…but not yet.”
35
If the prior week had been busy with visitors, once the approach was graded, it was as if the floodgates of mountain society had been opened. For Jesse it was a strange, incongruent reality that the lonely cabin, hidden high on the mountain, should suddenly be as busy as Grand Central Station. She made it a point to be more vigilant about the time Aunt Will sat up entertaining her visitors. This was not always easy, as the older woman was determine
d to have a word with friends and relations that she thought she might never see again. However, when Brother Chet and his prayer partners showed up, she had an immediate energy lapse and managed only, “Hello, make yourself at home,” as she rose to her feet and let Jesse help her to the bed.
After getting her aunt tucked in, Jesse was left with the church people, who refused coffee as an “unholy stimulant.”
After she was seated in the rocker, the pastor spoke to Jesse in grave tones. “I had truly hoped that we would have an opportunity to pray with Aunt Will and entreat the Lord for mercy on her soul. This close to facing judgment, she should be rightly concerned with her eternal salvation.”
There were nods of agreement all around.
Jesse felt compelled to rise to her defense.
“Uh…Brother Chet, I think perhaps you have the wrong idea about Aunt Will,” she said. “She is a very spiritual person. She prays regularly and has great faith in her place in the hereafter. Aunt Will simply doesn’t like to attend your church. I don’t think that’s a requirement for heaven.”
One of the women sniffed unkindly.
Brother Chet’s expression was excessively patient, his voice saccharinely sweet with condescension. “If there is a stumbling block between herself and her brothers and sisters in Christ, then it’s her duty to overcome it and be welcomed back into the fold.”
“Apparently yours is not the ‘fold’ for her,” Jesse insisted. “If she lived somewhere else, she’d have her choice of churches. But she lives here and she doesn’t want to attend your service.”
The sniffing woman spoke. “Doesn’t want to, or refuses to humble herself?”
The other prayer partners nodded in agreement. The pastor at least did not.
“I have told Aunt Will, time and time again, that she is welcome back in the house of the Lord,” he said. “All those who shunned her are gone on. But we who remain would cheerfully help her accept her repentance.”
